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cimoreneLast night's lecture (course for classroom assistants), the second from a Special Education teacher, was mostly about the national guidelines for building local and school-level curricula/course of study.
The teacher talked about leveling and how it was abolished entirely in Finland in the mid-1980s, all the way from elementary school up to high school (where the Finnish system splits into entirely voluntary technical schools and academic high schools). Even reading and maths are integrated for the whole class and Finland also has no what she called "elite" (or inherently leveled) schools. There isn't money to truly provide special needs children with THEIR education all the way throughout the country, which has many rural areas dotted with tiny rural schools with as few as 2-3 teachers and 15-50 students. Imagine, then, how little provision is possible for children of above-average intelligence. The lecturer admitted to me that these children are frequently not provided for; the ideal is that the teachers are meant to look at each individual pupil's level and provide them with more to do (or less to do, and more help), but the only REQUIREMENT is that the basic curriculum be taught in a certain way to everyone (except for special-needs students for whom a formal process provides exceptions).
God, I mean, just imagine how boring (I suspect, though, given that Finland has some of the best education in the world going by tests and so on, that it's actually still less boring than my childhood was). I was bored, and many many people are bored even in advanced classes (even primary school classmates who IQ-tested into the special weekly "Gifted and Talented" additions, as they were called in Alabama, but then didn't make the performance-based cuts to the top advanced levels of English, History, and math in middle school at grade 6).
There is no question that a child of above-average intelligence is in less need of help than a child with learning difficulty. Of course, the resources of society should be aimed at the latter, because the former is just bored, and the odds are, has the intellectual resources to find something else to do, and keep themselves occupied. But that's not to say that the deeply-ingrained habit of utter boredom and superiority imprinted on these children by inadequate primary school doesn't harm them! I actually didn't realize until the last several years how much it harmed me, but I am starting to think now that it was a lot worse for me than I suspected.
I am so accustomed to boredom, so used to it from the first day I transferred from a private Montessori school in New York to the Alabama public schools at age 6, that it didn't even occur to me until last night's lecture that the AIM of schooling is actually not only to "challenge" every pupil (a platitude I've often heard and which, let's face it, is problematic and in many cases not actually meant) - but to keep them occupied. The infinite variety of ways to occupy yourself "After you finish your work" was so familiar to me that I sat dazed and confused for several minutes while the lecturer talked about the ways classroom teachers can and do try to provide extra material and assignments for the above-average so they don't just sit twiddling their thumbs! "Isn't thumb-twiddling an essential, indeed, the MAIN point of school?", I thought at first.
I estimate that from age six when I started reading my own novels in class (first with Babysitter's Little Sister, quickly on to Babysitter's Club and Nancy Drew and thence to YA and adult fantasy from my parents' library), I was never without several personal books brought to read per day in my extra time, and I typically finished at least one per day all the way up through 7th grade, which was the first time I encountered classes I couldn't get through even if I kept reading the entire time the teacher was talking. I still remember the staggering force of my epiphany, in 7th grade "social studies" (really world history) that not only could I be engaged if I listened to the teacher only instead of reading while listening with one ear, what she was saying was actually complex enough to require more than one ear's attention to understand! Through high school, I was still able to finish a novel in a day to a week reading only in the time after I finished my work; but in primary school, I probably spent a good 50%-70% of my school hours reading.
And, hey, I have just fully realized the magnitude of that. Because... that is wrong. That is FUCKED-UP. And that should be obvious - should have been obvious to a long string of teachers who kind of weren't doing their jobs, not that it was really their fault with the utterly inadequate resources given to public education in Alabama.
The teacher talked about leveling and how it was abolished entirely in Finland in the mid-1980s, all the way from elementary school up to high school (where the Finnish system splits into entirely voluntary technical schools and academic high schools). Even reading and maths are integrated for the whole class and Finland also has no what she called "elite" (or inherently leveled) schools. There isn't money to truly provide special needs children with THEIR education all the way throughout the country, which has many rural areas dotted with tiny rural schools with as few as 2-3 teachers and 15-50 students. Imagine, then, how little provision is possible for children of above-average intelligence. The lecturer admitted to me that these children are frequently not provided for; the ideal is that the teachers are meant to look at each individual pupil's level and provide them with more to do (or less to do, and more help), but the only REQUIREMENT is that the basic curriculum be taught in a certain way to everyone (except for special-needs students for whom a formal process provides exceptions).
God, I mean, just imagine how boring (I suspect, though, given that Finland has some of the best education in the world going by tests and so on, that it's actually still less boring than my childhood was). I was bored, and many many people are bored even in advanced classes (even primary school classmates who IQ-tested into the special weekly "Gifted and Talented" additions, as they were called in Alabama, but then didn't make the performance-based cuts to the top advanced levels of English, History, and math in middle school at grade 6).
There is no question that a child of above-average intelligence is in less need of help than a child with learning difficulty. Of course, the resources of society should be aimed at the latter, because the former is just bored, and the odds are, has the intellectual resources to find something else to do, and keep themselves occupied. But that's not to say that the deeply-ingrained habit of utter boredom and superiority imprinted on these children by inadequate primary school doesn't harm them! I actually didn't realize until the last several years how much it harmed me, but I am starting to think now that it was a lot worse for me than I suspected.
I am so accustomed to boredom, so used to it from the first day I transferred from a private Montessori school in New York to the Alabama public schools at age 6, that it didn't even occur to me until last night's lecture that the AIM of schooling is actually not only to "challenge" every pupil (a platitude I've often heard and which, let's face it, is problematic and in many cases not actually meant) - but to keep them occupied. The infinite variety of ways to occupy yourself "After you finish your work" was so familiar to me that I sat dazed and confused for several minutes while the lecturer talked about the ways classroom teachers can and do try to provide extra material and assignments for the above-average so they don't just sit twiddling their thumbs! "Isn't thumb-twiddling an essential, indeed, the MAIN point of school?", I thought at first.
I estimate that from age six when I started reading my own novels in class (first with Babysitter's Little Sister, quickly on to Babysitter's Club and Nancy Drew and thence to YA and adult fantasy from my parents' library), I was never without several personal books brought to read per day in my extra time, and I typically finished at least one per day all the way up through 7th grade, which was the first time I encountered classes I couldn't get through even if I kept reading the entire time the teacher was talking. I still remember the staggering force of my epiphany, in 7th grade "social studies" (really world history) that not only could I be engaged if I listened to the teacher only instead of reading while listening with one ear, what she was saying was actually complex enough to require more than one ear's attention to understand! Through high school, I was still able to finish a novel in a day to a week reading only in the time after I finished my work; but in primary school, I probably spent a good 50%-70% of my school hours reading.
And, hey, I have just fully realized the magnitude of that. Because... that is wrong. That is FUCKED-UP. And that should be obvious - should have been obvious to a long string of teachers who kind of weren't doing their jobs, not that it was really their fault with the utterly inadequate resources given to public education in Alabama.
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(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 02:25 pm (UTC)I've heard people talk about that with a little sneer--"Those 'gifted' snots ain't so smart now!"--but really, it's genuinely a problem. It's not that we're lazy or arrogant; studying is a skill that many of us never learned. And since performance is also integral to how so many gifted kids are taught to think of themselves, when they can't perform up to their usual standard, their world drops out from under them. They become not just poorer students, but unhappy, less developed individuals who have no idea of their real potential, who can't live up to that potential; when performance is the only thing anyone valued in you, not being able to perform is world-shattering.
If I'm passionate about this, it's because I've lived through it. Which sounds arrogant...heh. I'm sorry. I don't mean it that way. It's just...looking back, how much more would I have gotten out of college, for instance, if I'd known that it was normal and okay for college to be hard, and that it didn't mean that my brain had suddenly failed me? I'd've had more courage, taken more risks, worked harder. Maybe. :) Same with any creative endeavors where I've shone a little at first, then hit that skill plateau. Now I'm stuck trying to fix all this at 33!
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 04:59 pm (UTC)When I was in high school, there was a girl in my class whom everyone said was soooooo smart, and I would look down on her because obviously she wasn't very smart. She spent all her time studying, both in school and at home. She had no hobbies, didn't read for fun or do anything but study! I thought, "That's not smart! If she were smart, she would be able to do the work in a few minutes like me and not study and have plenty of free time!" But last I heard she's something like a neurosurgeon now, so...
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 05:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 05:48 pm (UTC)The result of the way it currently works is exactly that, that gifted children are (pretty much without exception) trained to consider TRYING a bad thing. (I have this problem, for real. Anything that I find I'm bad at I quickly come to hate. I'm very bad at trying.)
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 05:54 pm (UTC)I remember linking that article when I found it. Oh, here it is. (Yay, LJ Archive.)
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 06:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 09:05 pm (UTC)Thanks for the link, that's a fascinating article, and it rings true in many ways. I will say though, that getting praised for my effort ("You must have worked really hard") when I knew I hadn't put in a lot of effort was also confusing and stressful and helped develop an escalating self-sabotaging strategy that persists to this day.
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 09:27 pm (UTC)Mistaken praise thinking I'd tried when I hadn't just engendered contempt for the praiser: I assumed they were saying that because THEY would have had to try, and couldn't imagine whatever-it-was being easy!
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 09:42 pm (UTC)Agreed! But in a school setting, that is often NOT the case (especially with things like assigned papers), and it definitely wasn't the case in the research discussed in that article, which involved giving kids a task they could all complete, and then randomly assigning whether they would be praised for their intelligence ("You must be smart at this") or their effort ("You must have worked really hard").
Mistaken praise thinking I'd tried when I hadn't just engendered contempt for the praiser
Ahh, I more often did the opposite. I assumed that if something required effort to be done well, and I hadn't put in any effort, it therefore could not be of any quality; and any subsequent praise for it was somehow mistaken, and that mistake would one day be discovered. So basically textbook Imposter Syndrome.
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:15 pm (UTC)It makes sense that a gifted child, for whom a puzzle was easy, would choose a more difficult one when praised that "you must have worked hard" (even if they were confused because they hadn't). But what's unexpected about that result, to me, is - assuming that a bell-curve of intelligence was present in both groups (which isn't necessarily true, but could be) - that when praised on results, children of above-average intelligence chose the easy puzzle; and that when praised on effort, children who might have been truly challenged by the first puzzle chose one that they knew would be hard. It's interesting, both in what it says about adding motivation for average children, and how to kill motivation DEAD in the gifted.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 06:03 am (UTC)It's interesting, both in what it says about adding motivation for average children, and how to kill motivation DEAD in the gifted.
Seriously, the effects observed in the study were so LARGE, and apparently so easily reversible!
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Date: 2 Dec 2009 05:21 pm (UTC)I had a daycare once that took away my books. My parents didn't keep me there very long.
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Date: 2 Dec 2009 06:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:13 pm (UTC)In third grade, I got in trouble for sneaking the books that were for later in the year off the shelf instead of doing math review. We spent half of each year reviewing the math we'd learned the year before, including the review from the year before. You can bet that got boring and uninteresting fast, especially when I was already reading Zelazny and Katherine Kurtz and Andre Norton's adult novels... at speed-reader speeds.
I guess I got a reputation for having my nose buried in a book even when I wasn't supposed to: in fifth grade they gave me an "avid reader" award. I think they meant well. It just reminds me of all the times I got into trouble for avoiding boredom by sneaking in some reading time.
The annoying part? They figured out I was a gifted reader when I was in first grade: I got sent to the advanced second-grade reading group in the second half of first grade. One of the other girls in my class got skipped a grade ahead partway through first grade because of her math ability.
Did they notice my math skills? No. *is bitter*
And yet my father-the-mathematician says that he taught me the beginnings of calculus in fifth grade. (I'd mostly forgotten that, but now I have to wonder if that's part of why parts of first year calculus were so easy for me in high school, *even with an unconsciously misogynistic teacher*. Seriously, she wouldn't even call on her own daughter very often. I really don't think she knew she was doing it.)
I will admit that they did work it out eventually: in middle school, I took seventh grade math in sixth grade.
In junior high, all my classes were gifted classes, but I don't recall working very hard, even so.
High school was small and for gifted kids. It actually was a really good thing for me, because I learned that I couldn't coast *before* I got to college. And we learned how to use an academic library for serious research in senior English.
Calc II in high school didn't exactly have grades and was really free form, but the teacher of the class told me at the end of the year that I was the best student in the class. I hadn't noticed (largely because we spent most of our time discussing math as a group, sort of like a seminar).
I didn't believe him.
Now I wonder what would have happened if I had?
Dang. This struck a nerve.
I started to write some of this up a while ago, but never finished, largely because I realized for the first time how bitter I was about the math thing.
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:57 pm (UTC)I am really grateful to my parents that they never gave me false praise. (And that they did tell me when I had actually been doing good work.) I can only imagine how much worse things would have been for me.
I do remember a certain amount of just playing with math with my father even if I don't remember the calc. (For instance, I remember graphing exponential growth of a penguin population with him.) And one winter when the schools were closed a lot during the energy crisis and the Blizzard of '78, my mother did some ad hoc homeschooling.
I also remember being sent to a math tutor in junior high. Some of the kids were there because they had trouble in school. I was there because my mother wanted to make sure I had fun with math (and also to make sure I got my homework done, because I had a tendency to ignore it in favor of reading). I have this really great memory of having an excellent time proving the Binomial Theorem.
It is somehow really strange, looking back at what were my parents' clear efforts to make sure I didn't have my math ability ignored, to think about my inability to see my own abilities.
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:26 pm (UTC)I liked reading your story. Now I remember math stuff too, heh. Although for me, the reading was always the focus--whether because it was my first love and my only escape for some time, or because other people focused on it for me (so to speak), I'm not sure. The high school you went to sounds really neat, like they really did want you all to learn and grow and (I think this is important) experience joy doing that. Because all schools, in theory, want us to learn and grow, but we don't get much joy in the process.
Despite some of the uncomplimentary things I've said about my parents, they did, at least when I was young, try to get me interested in things that would challenge me and help me learn. I remember finding a fossil with my dad and asking him how it got that way, and rather than come up with a BS answer he said, "Well, let's find out." That was awesome and brave of him. So we went to read all about fossils and for a while I wanted to be a paleontologist. :-D I was maybe five, six at the time.
Math classes...something really crappy happened in middle to high school, I dunno. It's like I became a little mouse or something. In mid-elementary school I was taking math classes (as were many in my class) at the middle school, but the teacher I had was so spiteful I just hated it. She really resented the younger kids' coming to her class. Not to be a drama queen, but after that I was convinced I was stupid at math and I hated it.
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:30 pm (UTC)Paging Philip Larkin
Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:35 pm (UTC)Re: Paging Philip Larkin
Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:43 pm (UTC)It was really shocking yesterday! It almost DID feel like going to a therapist!
Re: Paging Philip Larkin
Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:49 pm (UTC)Re: Paging Philip Larkin
Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 12:23 am (UTC)I was an obsessive reader until I had T. For some reason, when I was pregnant, and for a year or so after, all I could read was fanfic. Now I can read other things too, and in fact rarely read fanfic. (Not sure what happened, there.) But I don't read as avidly as I used to. I don't know why, and it makes me kind of sad sometimes.
High school was great, mostly. I was surrounded by geeks and nerds and dorks and (mostly) good teachers. It was like a preview of college, except smaller. A good thing for an introvert.
S was really fortunate in his elementary school; he went to an Open Plan school where kids did self-directed learning and didn't get graded. He didn't get graded on anything until he hit high school, and by then he'd already acquired self-confidence and a love of learning. I'm really envious of that sometimes. (Not that I don't have a love of learning; it's the self-confidence that's lacking.)
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 05:26 am (UTC)The biggest problem, I think, was that the school was an old one in an area experiencing rapid growth - there were 30+ kids in all of my classes from Kindergarten though 9th grade, hundred of kids in the school, and they weren't able to adapt :( The private school my parents eventually sent me to (9th-11th) was better but... quirky.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 02:21 pm (UTC)Yet another thing to be grateful for - decent enrichment teachers...
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 05:51 pm (UTC)I did have teachers TRY. I was reading a book inside my desk constantly during math in 4th grade, and the teacher and I got into a staredown with each other over it when I refused to hand it over to her! In retrospect, she must've been quite shocked, because I was her favorite student, and she my favorite teacher, and I was usually quite eager to please. In the end, she had a conference with me and my mom and we agreed that I had to make a slight effort to hide the book so the other kids would be less likely to notice I wasn't paying attention. <_<
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 05:08 am (UTC)My teachers tried! But classes were big and I was quiet, so.
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Date: 3 Dec 2009 02:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 3 Dec 2009 05:12 am (UTC)Why don't I have an art icon?
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 02:26 pm (UTC)PS you obviously need an art icon. I recommend
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Date: 2 Dec 2009 10:58 pm (UTC)These comments are so interesting, because this is definitely the story of my life too. Unlike Cim, I didn't finish everything fast and then read. I had contempt for the busywork and I'd put it off and then whip through it, or resist doing it at all. I had Cs in middle school English because I wouldn't fill out their stupid worksheets. My procrastination issues definitely started with being bored and unchallenged in school.
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:07 pm (UTC)They definitely taught me my contempt for other authority figures, combined with the ironclad law that I needed to make sure to follow the 'rules' (unless they were unjust) to avoid getting in trouble, come to think of it. I haven't fallen very far from the tree in these sorts of attitudes now, either.
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:28 pm (UTC)You've just reminded me of this epic confrontation I had in 9th grade Spanish! Every week we would spend an entire week on a "chapter" of the book that consisted of two facing pages. The first page would have a list of like 20 vocabulary words, and most of them would be cognates of course, and then the facing page would be a short few practice exercises, and there would be a little passage to read; and we'd be assigned to read the chapter for homework before we went over it in class, but she'd nonetheless spend basically the whole day on the picture/passage, and not even move on to the last of the exercises (which took me 20 minutes, tops, all put together) until the second day - and this with 98-minute classes! So one day I was engrossed in reading, and it was our second day with the chapter, and she was just talking for a long time, so I didn't even get my folder or textbook out of my backpack, just sat down and became engrossed in my novel. I read happily through most of the period, and then my teacher called on me out of the blue - with a distinctly pissed-off air - abruptly, thinking that because I was reading I'd have no idea what was going on. I absolutely heard and understood her question, but I straight-facedly and calmly asked what page we were on, and she waited with the whole class in utter silence while I got my book out, opened it, glanced at the problem and immediately answered. Then she asked me a follow-up question and I completely knew it, of course, so she asked about the exercises and I said I had already finished them... at which point she immediately (apparently) got over being pissed and told me I could read. o_O
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 05:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 02:46 pm (UTC)this is all I can remember, from my youngest years -- reading ahead in reading group, when I was in elementary school, and getting in trouble because then I wasn't properly engaging with the rest of the group, when how could I? because they were still on chapter two, and I was already done. And you know kids, like... if you can go faster, go farther on ANYTHING, you don't want to be held back. Doesn't matter if its reading or soccer or what-have-you. The first -- and wow, possibly the only time? -- anyone ever tried to fix this was in sixth grade English, when everyone else was reading Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher, and because I had read it several eons ago, Mrs. B had me read Uncle Tom's Cabin. Even made new questions and worksheets for me and everything. It's one of those only things I remember from that year, and I was so goddamn grateful to have something to do its almost ridiculous, in hindsight.
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Date: 2 Dec 2009 06:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 02:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 05:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 04:01 pm (UTC)He only had us for three years (district-wide program, 2nd through 5th grade), before we went on to the two middle schools, which had decidedly inferior gifted ed classes, and then to high school which had an appallingly limited range of honors or AP classes to choose from. In middle school and high school I watched his warning play out on too many of the kids who'd shared those elementary school gifted classes with me. Drop-outs, drug use, sharp drops in gpa due to lack of interest in turning in assignments/attending classes that offered no challenge whatsoever.
These days every district and school knows it takes more resources to handle students with special education needs, but too few recognize that that means gifted kids too. Letting kids get bored in class is dangerous. For myself, I coasted through high school with ease, getting mostly A and high B grades despite missing 35 days of school in one school-year. And when I got to college and ran into classes that actually challenged me, classes that actually required studying and reading challenging material I floundered. I'd never learned those skills because I'd never needed them.
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 04:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 06:03 pm (UTC)But two of my best friends from elementary school, both from the gifted program, totally crashed before we even got to HS: one was doing drugs at 14, the other was the school's go-to guy for fake IDs in senior high.
I think I actually had a far better than average instruction in how to research and how to write formal research papers. I can trace all of this to the personal initiative of exactly two teachers, who were in charge of 8th grade and 9th grade gifted history respectively. I was totally fucked when it came to study habits, though, and it's like I'm actually allergic to subjects I don't have a natural aptitude for: I never recovered from discovering it wasn't easy to learn Finnish (no cognates), and as a result have coasted through living here five years while barely able to order in a restaurant, as well as forgetting most of the grammar and vocab I crammed right before the exam of the one shitty course I took.
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 06:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 06:28 pm (UTC)(True story! We had to take an 'aptitude test' for the 7th grade "pre-Algebra" course at the end of 6th grade. I scored higher than my then-best friend, and neither one of us was tracked into the class; I didn't care because I've always disliked math. My friend's parents complained to the principal to have her put into the class anyway; my ordinary "advanced math" class turned out to be more fun and engaging than hers, though, because I happened to get a good teacher. And then we were both put in Algebra in 8th grade anyway. She was always very proud of her math skills.)
I was fortunate to have a dad who took hours of time to give me extra math work and write up sheets of problems for me at home when my math at school was too boring (he introduced me to fractions, negative numbers, and one-variable equations all at least a year before they were covered in school), and then later, when we did the kinds of math that were genuinely challenging to me, to sit and explain the stuff over and over.
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 06:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:49 pm (UTC)I hated Ms. Mason more, but that was mostly because she hated me. At least she wasn't actually mind-numbingly stupid.
Although, funny story re hating teachers, the Spanish II teacher, whose name I forget, had some kind of grudge against the woman who had taught me Spanish 1, and when I upgraded to IB, they required that I take a catchup course over the summer at UA which was dubbed 103, and was an intensive review of 101-102 for people who already had HS Spanish. (Despite not having had it before, I was at the top of the class, along with a girl who was a native speaker of Italian.) That class ended less than a month before 10th grade started and it covered about half the material that we then proceeded to cover in Spanish III, but at a much more congenial pace! So I actually started the year ahead. Apparently my mom is still offended that the teacher, at a teacher conference, took her aside to say that despite not having had her class I was "catching up well" when my mom already knew for a fact that I was already at the top of her class as well. Like, she still dislikes this teacher, whom she still meets at social functions, because of it.
Um, at least I came by my grudge-holding honestly?
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 12:22 am (UTC)My great moment of victory in that class was actually another "bored and reading" story, when we were going over the same basic concept for the 3rd day in a row. Mrs. Davis was usually pretty cool with letting us work at our own level, not requiring us to do the homework if we already felt we got it, etc., so I guess my sitting at the front of the class openly reading a novel must have been obnoxious as hell. About half way through working a problem on the board, she got tired of it and thought she'd call me out for not paying attention, so she looked over and said "Guinevere, what's the square root of 3?" (which was the next operation). I glanced up, said "It's 1.732," and went back to reading. Fortunately she knew a lost cause when she saw one and stopped bothering me. I chalked that up as a major win in the "Yes I CAN pay attention and read at the same time, thanks" column.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 01:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 07:27 pm (UTC)Don't be so quick to assume that above-average intelligence and learning difficulties are mutually exclusive, because they aren't. A learning difficulty (disability) does not necessarily mean lack of intelligence.
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 09:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 12:16 am (UTC)Sometimes I hate educators >.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 04:20 am (UTC)Had the parents notified the teachers that their sons were colorblind?
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 10:10 pm (UTC)No matter how smart you are, there's going to be a point in your life where inborn intelligence isn't enough - when you're going to have to work for it. I suspect that for far too many bright kids, that point doesn't come until college, when they don't have the support structure, social freedom, or flexibility to cope with the insecurity that accompanies things not being easy any more. If you can hit that wall at eight, you probably have a parent who can support you, and you probably have teachers who are willing to deal with your upset. Do it as a teen or twentysomething, and you lack all that. I've seen lots of bright kids flame out when they hit the wall for the first time, because their shame takes them down.
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 10:57 pm (UTC)I suspect the concentration of gifted children is extra high in fandom not just because of verbal intelligence, but also because of social skills.
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:48 pm (UTC)I suspect the concentration of gifted children is extra high in fandom not just because of verbal intelligence, but also because of social skills.
We also have more fic-writing time. No better way to mentally escape from school and still look appropriately busy than to sit in the back of class writing transformative gay porn in a notebook!
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 01:58 am (UTC)I don't usually write, but I can't sit still and listen; I usually have a sheet of notes as well as a page of doodles in front of me and I draw constantly.
I was actually doing that in an undergraduate writing workshop one day while the instructor babbled endlessly about the brilliance of Forster and Hemingway, REALLY not my cup of tea, but I was listening for all his points anyway and actually wrote down a mini-outline of his lecture among the doodles, even though most people weren't taking notes, because I WAS quite serious about trying to take his opinions on board even though it was obvious his background and perspective, in the White Tower Literary Canon and strictly Deeply Meaningful Work by White Men, was so different from mine. He took me aside after the lecture to say he was disturbed because it was apparently "disrespectful" to be doodling while he talked since I couldn't be paying attention. How could anyone ever take notes, if that were the case? I assured him that I actually had been paying attention, but he was like "Okay, then what did I say?" and wasn't satisfied until I summarized the entire 2-hour lecture for him. Why yes, I am still bitter!
(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2 Dec 2009 11:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 12:04 am (UTC)Is it okay to ask whether your partner's found any strategies that work for him?
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 02:31 am (UTC)Which. I don't know if I can recommend myself as a cure for issues *EG*. But a good personal or professional relationship with someone to whom you can really confess those issues is probably not a bad idea.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 02:37 am (UTC)I'll use my Emma Goldman icon for this since she so often tried to cure her boys' issues, with varying success. Hee. Good old Emma. How someone could be so politically active while also having so much personal drama, I have no idea.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 12:08 am (UTC)That experience probably saved my bacon in 9th grade IB English, which was the second wall. For the first assignment, I did my usual quicky work which was, historically, good enough to get an easy A. When it got handed back with a B on it, my brain immediately went "OH, I get it - this is going to be a REAL class!" I now knew what to do with one of those and stepped up my game, which turned out to be necessary for most of the IB program coursework. Hooray for walls, and hitting them early enough!
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 02:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 02:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 11:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 02:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 05:01 pm (UTC)Sad thing is there has been research on why this is so since before WWII. Short version, they try their friendship skills on agemates who are likely still more 'rough' and they don't know it's not their fault it doesn't work to satisfaction. And, adults tend to tell them it is their fault. Add to this that often children associate via playing their interests, the gifted child is set up for more failure unless provided with peers.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 05:22 pm (UTC)A toddler does not have that level of self-awareness and social awareness. I still feel deep down inside that the adults who punish a pre-schooler for being abnormal and applaud and confirm the normal children in ostracizing the freaks are evil. Evil, bad people.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 06:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 09:39 pm (UTC)Or looks for peers anywhere they can find them by learning to automatically despise age-mates, and setting a life-long habit of only being able to relate to people your parents' age?
*raises hand*
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 12:49 am (UTC)i ended up with a D in the class due to my "in class participation" grade, even though i could correctly answer anything put to me without thought and completed all my work and the busywork she'd assign to just me.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 01:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 03:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 01:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 02:39 am (UTC)I went from being top ten of my high school graduating class and never having had to apply myself to anything ever, to failing out of my first year of college. Granted, some of that was due to illness and depression, but also...I tried to be a Physics major, which I thought was a wonderful idea despite the fact that my (rural, public) high school had never even offered basic Physics. I always had some Impostor Syndrome going on because I knew I never actually worked at anything, and then suddenly I couldn't coast anymore and I crashed and burned and it all felt validated. I felt like taking my transcript and waving it in front of my parents and teachers and telling them, "Look! I always told you I wasn't smart, I'm just good at faking it, and here's proof."
Most of my close friends and I were "TAG"-ed (Talented And Gifted) from early elementary school, but there was never an actual program set up to serve TAG students. Math was the one exception, and I think my high school actually turned out a few very successful math-oriented college students. Most of our teachers would tell us that they would have some "additional work" to keep the more advanced students challenged, but they very rarely followed through with it. I don't blame them; they were overworked as it was.
Right now I'm still kind of hitting the wall and attempting not to quite flame out. I don't know how to stop telling myself that if I can't get an A+ without breaking a sweat, I might as well give up entirely.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 09:08 am (UTC)But at the same time, I'm still in school and this whole thing, all the baggage and anxiety and self-defeating thinking and habits of avoidance and procrastination and sabotage, it's too real and immediate for me to talk about.
When it's becoming too much for you, I recommend taking courses just for fun. Do something where you honestly could not care less what grade you get, or if you get any credit, just do it for the joy of learning, and remind yourself that you love learning, you love stretching yourself, and reading is fun!
Get a job. It's all right to take a bit longer to get through college/grad school if you're working, and the wonderful thing about a job is that you don't have to worry about your studies while you're there, you get to hang out with people who don't care about academia, but value you strictly for being you and a good and dependable co-worker, and your boss sets the criteria for success; in the real world, success is anything that's serviceable and performed quickly enough that you can move onto the next task in a timely manner. Very relaxing! (Everyone says you should get a job which ties in to your major, and which will look good on your curriculum, but I think the more different the better.)
Do sports/some other hobby. Something which will serve as a therapeutic break from school, and will give you an experience of success and joy.
If you can't study, find someone to tutor. Be a total slacker tutor! It's all right if you're doing it for free. Show up to your study sessions unprepared, but bring the materials. Then help your classmate organize his/her notes, write an outline, look up definitions, all that stuff. True, it can make attending class even more excruciatingly painful, but give yourself permission to daydream/doodle/read.
If it gets really tough, it's better to take break than wear yourself down. Take a semester or two off, and do something you've always wanted to do. Not sit at home and watch day-time tv. That's what happens if you flame out. No, travel! Take a time-consuming job! Volunteer!
I don't know if any of these suggestions help, but it's what I wish someone would have told me when I first started college.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 02:18 pm (UTC)But back in high school, I managed a pretty good outlet with
When it's becoming too much for you, I recommend taking courses just for fun. Do something where you honestly could not care less what grade you get, or if you get any credit, just do it for the joy of learning, and remind yourself that you love learning, you love stretching yourself, and reading is fun!
We only had four 98-minute class periods per day, and I took art both semesters of senior year. The teacher gave me permission to ignore her assignments and do my own independent project, so I was entirely absorbed in drawing the pencil portraits of people that I was interested in for one quarter of the school day all year long. That trance state, which managed to turn off my anxiety over everything else, was probably a big contributing factor in saving my sanity. When I tried that in college, though, the teacher made us start with exercises in simple perspective, which was so utterly boring that I dropped the class after 3 weeks. Also, only meeting once per week really wasn't useful. On the other hand, I did a once-or-twice-weekly off-campus dance thing with a big crowd of vegetarian-food-eating hippies, and that was actually quite effective.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 04:12 pm (UTC)This time, everything will work out much better. We are prepared!
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 09:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 10:11 pm (UTC)I took a course at a vocational school once. It's one of the best things I've done in my life, I really, really loved it.
You aren't there to excel or live up to some unrealistic perfectionist ideal, you are there to learn skills that will help you make the world a better place. It's a great feeling.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 11:01 pm (UTC)